It can be a challenge to move your website from one location to another if you don’t know what to do with your links. Just recently we talked about how you can update your URLs using the Velvet Blues Plugin for WordPress. But what if people try to access a page on your site through your old URL? Today we are going to show you how to redirect broken URLs to your new URL. The best part about is that you don’t have to know anything about your .htaccess file. Redirection is a WordPress plugin that manages 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have.
First thing you need to do is install and activate Redirection Plugin for WordPress. Upon activation go to “tools” and click on “redirection”. This will open a screen that will allow you to input your old URL (source) and new URL (target).
For beginners, this simple screen can look confusing. Let us explain. The match dropdown has a few options. URL only, URL and referrer, URL and useragent, and URL and login status. In most cases, you want to use URL and referrer. Mainly because if you are seeing a number of 404 requests for a specific page, it is not users typing your URL in. It has to be someone who is linking to it. So now whenever someone else links to the broken URL (or a post that you moved), it automatically redirects them to the new location. So use URL and referrer option for that.
Your action should always be Redirect to URL, unless you know what you are doing.
After you have enter this information hit “add redirection”. Go to the new URL to test and make sure that it works. As long as the permalink structure is the same everything should have been successfully moved.
This plugin also has the option to track 404s. There is an option called Logs. This contains a list of 404 hits that your site is getting. You can take a look at the ones and determine what to do about them. For example, someone might be linking to your older post that you no longer have. You can redirect those to another location. All you have to do is click the + icon next to that log entry.
These logs will also reveal how people are trying to attack your site. We get tons of 404 inquiries from bots that are trying to try every single theme with timthumb infection. Hoping that they will find something (they won’t). But it’s interesting to see all the IPs that are trying things.
This plugin also handles redirection for your modified posts. If you modified your post’s URL, then this plugin sets up an automatic redirect. It is one of the MUST have plugins for any serious bloggers.
I’ll give this plugin a try, sounds like it’ll work great. My only concern is that it will slow the site down. This leads me to a question: if I use the plugin now and fix all my 404s through 301 redirects with this app, then delete the app when I’m done redirecting all the pages, will the redirects stay, or will they go away with the app. In other words, do I need to keep the plugin installed and activated to keep the 301 redirects active? Thanks!
The plugin has to stay activated for the redirects to work. If you only have a few redirects, then you can simply make those in the .htaccess file.
And what does Google like this? Or will it give you a lowere rate?
Google cleans up the 404 results automatically right?
Your 404 pages shouldn’t be getting indexed to begin with.
What are “match”, “action”, and “regular expression” used for? Was hoping that would be covered in the article.
Is it better to manage the 404 error pages in the htaccess file or with this plugin? Is there a performance issue using one of these two systems?
@javierojuel This plugin is a must have for pretty much every blog. It is very well optimized. The point is that you can’t track 404 pages as well as this plugin does. Also by doing the hard code way, you can screw things up if you don’t know what you are doing. Redirection protects you at least to some extent.
Ironically, the Velvet Blues Plugin for WordPress link in this article goes to a 404 error page.
@TobyFoote Fixed it